In the confusion, the alien sneaks into the family's van and goes home with them.
I don't have a joke about this, I just thought it was interesting.) (OK, I do have jokes about it, but they're in poor taste.) Eric and his mother, Janet (Christine Ebersole), and older brother, Michael (Jonathan Ward), are driving from Chicago to their new home in Southern California when they come upon a pileup caused by the baby alien scampering across the road.
(The actor who plays him, Jade Calegory, is actually disabled in real life, having been born with spina bifida. He is 12-year-old Eric Cruise, and he is confined to a wheelchair for unspecified reasons. The human hero of the story does none of these things. You would scream in terror, void your bladder, and summon a priest. They are hideous monsters, and you would not seek to befriend one if it appeared in your house. He and his fellow aliens do not walk the line between "cute" and "ugly" so much as they shuffle up to the line and frighten it away with their ugliness. At NASA headquarters, which are apparently in California now, the Mama, Papa, and Junior aliens make a run for it, while Baby alien gets separated from them and strikes out on his own.The li'l fella looks just like his parents and sibling, with huge eyes and an O-shaped mouth that makes him look like a constantly surprised Jimmy Stewart (whose surprise no doubt stems from how much his belt has chafed his nipples), and fat, jowly cheeks that make him look like Walter Matthau. A family of alien creatures who resemble skinny actors wearing tight-fitting alien costumes is out foraging for food when a NASA space probe lands, gathers them up, and heads back to Earth. We begin on a distant, rocky planet that resembles Arizona, except that unlike Arizona, this planet can sustain life. There are numerous continuity errors, plot holes, and embarrassing special effects, suggesting that when the people at McDonald's co-sponsored the production (really!), they had the same attitude they have toward their food, i.e., that it doesn't matter if it's good, it just needs to say "McDonald's" on it. that's half-over before the Elliot character even officially meets the E.T.
(Little candy-coated globs of toothpaste, maybe?)What's alarming is that it's a terrible movie anyway, a boring, bald-faced rip-off of E.T. It makes me want to go to Burger King, order a Pepsi, and eat whatever the generic equivalent of Skittles is. Like all good Americans, I occasionally enjoy a meal at McDonald's, a drink from the Coca-Cola company, or a handful of Skittles-brand chewy candies - but seeing these products pimped with such enthusiasm and vigor in Mac and Me is a turn-off. Thus we come to Mac and Me, which employs some of the most egregious and outlandish product placement in history. For every E.T., which famously helped the popularity of Reese's Pieces by making them the title character's favorite candy, you have a dozen cases like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, which did nothing to increase sales of electro-shock-therapy equipment. But when Hollywood tries to force a trend by inserting blatant product placement into its films, the results are often mixed. It wasn't until the early 1970s that men's trousers re-descended to their proper elevation. (The Great Depression also occurred during this time.) In the 1950s, when Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart were wearing their pants so high that their belts chafed their nipples, all of America followed along. Our history books speak of Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character being so popular that it inspired millions of people to forsake their jobs and homes and live on the streets in the early 1930s. Hollywood has had an impact on consumer trends ever since the early days of film.